[Ed. Note: The Bible used in the preparation of The
Woman's Bible is the 1888 edition of the Julie Smith translation of the
Bible - a literal translation - one of FIVE translations by this brilliant
woman. See the appendix for more information.]

THE BOOK OF GENESIS - CHAPTER I.

Genesis i; 26, 27, 28

26 And God said, Let us make man in our
image. after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of
the sea, and over the fowl of the air, andover the cattle, and over all
the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created
he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and
multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over
the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living
thing that moveth upon the earth.

----------------------------------------

(The following commentary was written by Elizabeth Cady
Stanton. It will be followed by commentaries by Ellen Batelelle Dietrick
and Lillie Devereux Blake. Members of the revising committee wrote on whatever
portions they wished or felt they had authority.)

HERE is the sacred historian's first account of the advent of woman;
a simultaneous creation of both sexes, in the image of God. It is evident
from the language that there was consultation in the Godhead, and that
the masculine and feminine elements were equally represented. Scott in
his commentaries says, "this consultation of the Gods is the origin
of the doctrine of the trinity."
But instead of three male personages, as generally
represented, a Heavenly Father, Mother, and Son would seem more rational.
The first step in the elevation of woman to her true
position, as an equal factor in human progress, is the cultivation of the
religious sentiment in regard to her dignity and equality, the recognition
by the rising generation of an ideal Heavenly Mother, to whom their prayers
should be addressed, as well as to a Father.

If language has any meaning, we have in these texts a plain declaration
of the existence of the feminine element in the Godhead, equal in power
and glory with the masculine. The Heavenly Mother and Father! "God
created man in his own image, male and female."
Thus Scripture, as well as science and philosophy,
declares the eternity and equality of sex the philosophical fact, without
which there could have been no perpetuation of creation, no growth or development
in the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdoms, no awakening nor progressing
in the world of thought.
The masculine and feminine elements, exactly
equal and balancing each other, are as essential to the maintenance of
the equilibrium of the universe as positive and negative electricity, the
centripetal and centrifugal forces, the laws of attraction which bind together
all we know of this planet whereon we dwell and of the system in which
we revolve.

In the great work of creation the crowning glory was realized, when
man and woman were evolved on the sixth day, the masculine and feminine
forces in the image of God, that must have existed eternally, in all forms
of matter and mind.
All the persons in the Godhead are represented
in the Elohim the divine plurality taking counsel in regard to this last
and highest form of life. Who were the members of this high council, and
were they a duality or a trinity? Verse 27 declares the image of God male
and female. How then is it possible to make woman an afterthought? We find
in verses 5-16 the pronoun "he" used.

Should it not in harmony with verse 26 be "they," a dual pronoun?
We may attribute this to the same cause as the use of "his" in
verse ii instead of "it." The fruit tree yielding fruit after
" his" kind instead of after " its" kind. The paucity
of a language may give rise to many misunderstandings.

The above texts plainly show the simultaneous creation of man and woman,
and their equal importance in the development of the race. All those theories
based on the assumption that man was prior in the creation, have no foundation
in Scripture.

As to woman s subjection, on which both the canon and the civil law
delight to dwell, it is important to note that equal dominion is given
to woman over every living thing, but not one word is said giving man dominion
over woman.

Here is the first title deed to this green earth giving alike to the
sons and daughters of God. No lesson of woman's subjection can be fairly
drawn from the first chapter of the Old Testament.

-- E.C.S.[Elizabeth Cady Stanton]

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(A further comment by Ellen Batelelle Dietrick):

The most important thing for a woman to note, in reading Genesis, is
that that portion which is now divided into "the first three chapters"
(there was no such division until about five centuries ago), contains two
entirely separate, and very contradictory, stories of creation, written
by two different, but equally anonymous, authors.
No Christian theologian of to-day, with any
pretensions to scholarship, claims that Genesis was written by Moses.
As was long ago pointed out, the Bible itself
declares that all the books the Jews originally possessed were burned in
the destruction of Jerusalem, about 588 B. C., at the time the people were
taken to Babylonia as slaves to the Assyrians, (see II Esdras, ch. xiv,
v. 21, Apocrypha).
Not until about 247 B. C. (some theologians
say 226 and others 169 B.C.) is there any record of a collection of literature
in the rebuilt Jerusalem, and, then, the anonymous writer of II Maccabees
briefly mentions that some Nehemiah "gathered together the acts of
the kings and the prophets and those of David" when "founding
a library" for use in Jerusalem.
But the earliest mention anywhere in the Bible
of a book that might have corresponded to Genesis is made by an apocryphal
writer, who says that Ezra wrote "all that hath been done in the world
since the beginning," after the Jews returned from Babylon, under
his leadership, about 450 B. C. (see II Esdras, ch. xiv, v. 22, of the
Apocrypha).
When it is remembered that the Jewish books
were written on rolls of leather, without much attention to vowel points
and with no division into verses or chapters, by uncritical copyists, who
altered passages greatly, and did not always even pretend to understand
what they were copying, then the reader of Genesis begins to put herself
in position to understand how it can be contradictory.
Great as were the liberties which the Jews
took with Genesis, those of the English translators, however, greatly surpassed
them.
The first chapter of Genesis, for instance,
in Hebrew, tells us, in verses one and two," As to origin, created
the gods (Elohim) these skies (or air or clouds) and this earth... And
a wind moved upon the face of the waters." Here we have the opening
of a polytheistic fable of creation, but, so strongly convinced were the
English translators that the ancient Hebrews must have been originally
monotheistic that they rendered the above, as follows: "In the beginning
God created the heaven and the earth... And the spirit of God (!) moved
upon the face of the waters."
It is now generally conceded that some one
(nobody pretends to know who) at some time (nobody pretends to know exactly
when), copied two creation myths on the same leather roll, one immediately
following the other.

About one hundred years ago, it was discovered by Dr. Astruc, of France,
that from Genesis ch. i, v. r to Genesis ch. ii, v. 4, is given one complete
account of cretion, by an author who always used the term "the gods"
(Eloitim), in speaking of the fashioning of the universe, mentioning it
altogether thirty-four times, while, in Genesis ch.ii, v. 4, to the end
of chapter iii, we have a totally different narrative, by an author of
uximistakably different style, who uses the term "Iahveh of the gods"
twenty times, but "Elohim" only three times.
The first author, evidently, attributes creation
to a council of gods, acting in concert, and seems never to have heard
of Iahveh.
The second attributes creation to Iahveh, a
tribal god of ancient Israel, but represents Iahveh as one of two or more
gods, conferring with them (in Genesis ch. xiii, v.22) as to the danger
of man's acquiring immortality.

Modern theologians have, for convenience sake, entitled these two fables,
respectively, the Elohistic and the lahoistic stories. They differ, not
only in the point I have mentioned above, but in the order of the "creative
acts" in regard to the mutual attitude of man and woman, and in regard
to human freedom from prohibitions imposed by deity.
In order to exhibit their striking contradictions,
I will place them in parallel columns:

ELOHISTIC

Order of creation:
First Water.
Second Land.
Third Vegetation.
Fourth Animals.
Fifth Mankind;
male and female.

In this story male and female man are created simultaneously, both
alike, in the image of the gods, after all animals have been called into
existence.

In this story male man is sculptured out of clay before
any animals are created, and before female man has been constructed.

Here, joint dominion over the earth is given to woman and
man, without limit or prohibition.

Here, woman is punished with subjection to man for breaking a prohibitory
law.

Everything, without exception, is pronounced very good."

There is a tree of evil, whose fruit, is said by Iahveh
to cause sudden death, but which does not do so, as Adam lived 930 years
after eating it.

Man and woman are told that "every plant bearing seed upon the
face of the earth and every iree... "To you it shall be for meat."
They are thus given perfect freedom.

Man is told there is one tree of which he must not eat,
"for in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die."

Man and woman are given special dominion over all the animals
- "every creeping thing that creepeth npon the earth."

An animal, a "creeping thing," is given dominion over man
and woman, and proves himself more truthful than Iahveh Elohim. (Compare
Genesis chapter ii, verse 17, with chapter iii, verses 4 and 22.)

Now as it is manifest that both of these stories cannot be true; intelligent
women, who feel bound to give the preference to either, may decide according
to their own judgment of which is more worthy of an intelligent woman's
acceptance.
Paul's rule is a good one in this dilemma,
"Prove all things: hold fast to that which is good." My own opinion
is that the second story was manipulated by some Jew, in an endeavor to
give "heavenly authority" for requiring a woman to obey the man
she married.
In a work which I am now completing, I give
some facts concerning ancient Israelitish history, which will be of peculiar
interest to those who wish to understand the origin of woman's subjection.

-- E.B.D. [Ellen Batelelle Dietrick]

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(A further comment by Lillie Devereux Blake):

Many orientalists and students of theology have maintamed that the consultation
of the Gods here described is proof that the Hebrews were in early days
polytheists Scott s supposition that this is the origin of the Trinity
has no foundation in fact, as the beginning of that conception is to be
found in the earliest of all known religious nature worship.
The acknowledgment of the dual principal, masculine
and feminine, is much more probably the explanation of the expressions
here used.

In the detailed description of creation we find a gradually ascending
series. Creepng things, "great sea monsters," (chap. I, v. 21,
literal translation). "Every bird of wing," cattle and living
things of the earth, the fish of the sea and tile "birds of the heavens,"
then man, and last and crowning glory of the whole, woman.

It cannot be maintained that woman was inferior to man even if, as asserted
in chapter ii, she was created after him without at once admitting that
man is inferior to the creeping things, because created after them.

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